Valentino Rossi | Qatar FP Wallpaper

Valentino Rossi’s performance throughout the 2011 MotoGP pre-season was very unusual, the Italian not adapting well to the Ducati Team GP11.

But on Thursday when the MotoGP grid began practicing for the 18-round season opener at Losail International Circuit, Qatar, Rossi was with the leading pack, posting the fifth fastest lap in FP1.

The Ducati MotoGP Team worked to further improve on Rossi’s GP11 setup in FP2 and FP3, but the team and Rossi couldn’t lower his lap times, and his best in FP2 was ninth (1.075 seconds behind the leader Casey Stoner on the Repsol Honda RC212V), and in FP3 he posted the eight quickest time, 1.271 seconds behind Stoner.

Valentino Rossi (Ducati MotoGP GP11) says: "Today was a bit difficult, because we had hoped to make a bigger improvement, but in the end we didn’t’ lower our time enough. First of all, my shoulder bothered me a little.

"I wasn’t as strong as I was yesterday, and in the end of the session, I could feel it. Also, we still don’t know this bike perfectly and, as happened to us in the MotoGP test, we get to a point where it’s difficult to make a step forward with the setup.

"It’s partly a matter of experience. We’re trying to work with the weight distribution, especially on the rear, but we still haven’t found the right balance. We’re missing half a second with our pace to be in the group where we hope to be Sunday. Anyway, today we tried two setup solutions that were quite different, and we chose one that we’ll try to refine tomorrow."

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